Janina Bolling | OpTecBB & Shlomo Glazer | Photonics Israel

The AgriPhotonics ZIM Network connects German and Israeli organisations that collect data of plant material for knowledge-based and sustainable plant production using optical methods and photonic technologies.

Janina Bolling LinkedIn Profile & Shlomo Glazer LinkedIn Profile

Nikos Tsoulias | Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Bio-economy

During his speech "Extraction of temporal plant information using 3D LiDAR data in apple trees", Nikos Tsoulias has explained that the implementation of geometric and radiometric features in three-dimensional space analysis can improve the fruit detection. In this study, a light detection and range LiDAR system was used to scan apple trees before and after defoliation, four times during seasonal tree growth. And the conclusion of the study points to the high capacity of LiDAR variables to localize fruit and estimate its size by means of remote sensing.

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Manuela Zude-Sasse | Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Bio-economy

Manuela Zude-Sasse has presented several Mobile Apps for Precision Horticulture that, combined with site-specific technologies like sensors or drones, may have applications such as planning the best harvest date, mapping the soluble solids content in citrus, chlorophyll decrease or carotenoids accumulation.

Since many horticultural crops are in small fields in the major part of the world, Manuela has also pointed out that site-specific technologies should be developed and they must be economically viable and easy for small farmers to adopt.

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Dr. Iftach Klapp | ARO Volcani Center

Dr. Iftach Klapp has explained how his team has developed a robust algorithm that detects melons in an agricultural environment using UAV images for yield estimation.
The CNN algorithm based system includes three main stages: melon detection, feature extraction, yield estimation and has provided promising results.

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Dr. Ron Porat | ARO Volcani Center

Ron Porat has described some of the research activities conducted in Volcani Institute. At the Dept. of Postharvest Science, the research areas are: ripening and senescence, postharvest decay control, chilling stress, sensory and nutritional quality. The research areas of the Dept. of Food Science include: chemical and microbial food safety, agronanotechnology measures for smart packaging, grain storage, health and nutritious foods.

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Claudia Pacholski | University of Potsdam

Light technologies for process analytics in food industry can be used for determining the concentration or the particle size of the elements. Some use cases are enzyme induced gelling in cheese production, the mashing process of beer, or inline characterisation of high cell density fermentation. On the other hand, the application of biosensors and fibre optics in the agrifood value chain can be also used to study the degradation of microplastic in soil -and its subsequent entry into the food chain-, by analysing the composition of soil wit IR spectroscopy.

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Oded Liran | MIGAL Galilee Research Institute

The NDVI index was originally invented to track seasonal changes in vegetation satellites images, but it is not accurate when it comes to address agricultural challenges. And this is where plant physiology comes in. A discipline which studies chemical reactions that change with time like photosynthesis, germination, transpiration or ripening. However, outside a controlled environment measurements are getting tricky and it requires the intervention of technologies like remote sensing spectroscopy, chemometrics, machine learning or data science. The group of Agrophysics studies of the MIGAL Galilee Research Institue, is focused in the application of machine learning and remote sensing to monitor plant physiology to enable a better Precision Agriculture.

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Valentin Regir | LLA Instruments GmbH & Co. KG